Real Screen Comics #14
Real Screen Comics #14 is a representative chapter in one of DC's most successful funny-animal licensing deals of the Golden Age, showcasing three Screen Gems properties — Fauntleroy Fox and Crawford Crow, Tito and His Burrito, and Flippity and Flop — under one cover in the anthology format DC used to dominate the postwar humor-comics market. The Fox and Crow pairing, created by Frank Tashlin in 1941, were already the anchor of the title and would go on to headline three simultaneous DC series by the early 1950s, a feat of brand longevity unusual for licensed cartoon characters. For Flippity and Flop specifically, this mid-series anthology appearance is part of the extended run of DC backup slots that built enough readership for the duo to earn their own title in late 1951, long after their Screen Gems theatrical cartoons had ended. The issue also illustrates DC's editorial strategy of the era: packaging second-tier animation-studio characters alongside their biggest funny-animal star to give every story in the book a proven animated pedigree.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
Real Screen Comics launched in 1945 as a licensed anthology built around characters from Columbia Pictures' Screen Gems animation studio, with the series title itself a direct nod to that studio's name. Fauntleroy Fox and Crawford Crow had been created by director Frank Tashlin for Screen Gems' Color Rhapsody series, with their debut short 'The Fox and the Grapes' (1941) loosely adapted from Aesop and later acknowledged by Chuck Jones as an influence on his Road Runner cartoons. By the time issue #14 appeared in 1947, Screen Gems had already ceased production and its cartoon library was winding down, yet DC continued generating original comics stories for all its licensed properties; the interior and cover art for this issue was handled by James F. Davis (b. 1915), a west-coast animator who became the near-exclusive illustrator for these characters and worked largely uncredited across hundreds of pages.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Cover date is October or November 1947 (sources conflict — see flagged); published by DC Comics as part of the Real Screen Comics anthology series (vol. 1).
- Cover and interior story art credited to James F. Davis, a west-coast animator who served as the primary artist on Fox & Crow and Flippity & Flop comics content for DC.
- The issue features multiple Fox & Crow stories, including one in which Crow schemes to steal Fox's television set, and another in which the two compete to prove which of them is the better friend.
- A Tito and His Burrito story also appears, in which Tito's uncle gives him a pet pig that makes Burrito jealous.
- The Flippity and Flop story in this issue features the unusual premise of Flippity growing lonely and actually wanting Flop to chase him — an inversion of the standard predator-prey dynamic.
- Fauntleroy Fox and Crawford Crow were created by Frank Tashlin for Screen Gems (Columbia Pictures) and debuted in the 1941 animated short 'The Fox and the Grapes'; the comic books gave them their full names, which were rarely used in the cartoons themselves.
- Flippity (renamed from the animated character 'Flippy') and Flop appeared in only four Screen Gems theatrical shorts before that studio closed; their DC comic-book career, built through anthology appearances like this one, outlasted the cartoons by over a decade, running until 1962.
- Real Screen Comics ran 128 issues (1945–1959) before being retitled TV Screen Cartoons with issue #129; Fox and Crow eventually headlined their own 108-issue DC series (January 1952 – March 1968).
Cast · 4 characters
Full plot ⚠ may contain spoilers
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Punchy Penguin plans to sell the Northern Lights to folks for their Christmas trees.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).